


The Scenery Spins

by our_black_heart



Series: Circles [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Depersonalization, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memories, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:51:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5080150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/our_black_heart/pseuds/our_black_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky never really knows when it's going to hit, but it hits hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scenery Spins

**Author's Note:**

> I know that this can definitely be triggering, please read this with a warning in mind and as carefully as possible. Also, this is titled after one of my favorite lyrics in one of my favorite songs. It's called Circles by a band named Thrice and you HAVE to listen to it, cause it's so good.

Sweat starts to pool around Bucky’s bushy eyebrows and every time he blinks, little droplets fall into his eyes and sting. It doesn’t burn, but it stings. He blinks his eyes rapidly, hoping that it’ll stop the distant stinging and for a while it does. That is until another few droplets fall into his eyes again. The process has been repeated for over an hour now. He got on the treadmill about two hours ago and after the first warm up hour, sweat began to pour out of his body profusely. This doesn’t normally happen, it just recently started happening to him. Before finding his way back to Steve the serum in Bucky’s body was fighting everything out of Bucky’s system. That meant that he was never ill, not physically and certainly not mentally, but the recent overwhelming breakthrough with his memory has left him weak and susceptible to illness, physical and mental. In other words, Bucky sweats now and he sweats a lot. It took some getting used to, definitely, but he finds solace in the gym. He feels the need to overwork his body until it is finally exhausted and that can take hours if not all day, but it makes him feel like a person again. So no one really says anything to him when they hear him dragging his feet out of his room on their shared floor at five in the morning, or when they hear him dragging his feet back into his room at one in the morning the next day. They sort of just brush it off as normal: as Bucky. 

Right now though, it’s one of the tougher days. Everyone knows it and Bucky feels it, he feels that desperation and anxiety clinging to his chest, waiting at the back of his mind for the right time to pounce on him. He almost feels as if he’s trying to outrun it, the more he thinks about it the faster he runs. He considers himself lucky, because if these treadmills were made by anyone other than Tony Stark, they probably wouldn’t be able to handle the speed that he was running at. He blames it on the adrenaline. 

Usually the treadmills face the city, they have a huge window built into the gym that allows them to look out unto it. Watch it from above, admire the skyline and such, but Bucky has always preferred to keep it simple and solely for exercising purposes. He naturally claims the treadmill at the very end and faces it near the wall, over time it has become his treadmill. No one ever uses it and if they ever did, he’s sure he would lose his shit almost instantly. So he doesn’t really hope for that day to come and he isn’t really expecting it to come either. 

The wall in front of him is white. Plain, stark, white. A burning hot, kind of white. It reminds him of playing in the snow and getting ice burn on his hands from leaving them out of the sled without his gloves on. The kind of burn that you can’t really tell whether it’s too cold or too hot and it irks your mind for hours. He thinks his sight may be blurring at the edges, but he can’t be certain if that’s happening, because it’s all one color and white is such a difficult color for him to process. 

He’s not really sure what’s going on until he realizes that Steve and Natasha are calling to him, they sound far away. Or maybe like he’s the one that’s far away, but still close enough to hear. Maybe they came up here to spar, they usually do. He can’t find the will to turn away from the wall, but he knows they’re calling and if he doesn’t turn around soon enough Steve will come over and tap him on the shoulder. He doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want to be touched right now. Slowly the voices start to fade, he’s alone again, he thinks. He vaguely remembers being on a treadmill, but it might have been in another life or world or universe. He’s running down the street, heading towards a home he knows, but can’t remember how. His mother opens the door for him when he arrives and she tells him about how Steve visited earlier, but had to go home just a few minutes before Bucky got there. He’s disappointed and then he’s floating. He’s watching his mother tell a younger version of himself that if he hadn’t been messing around with those girls, he’d had made it in time to catch little Stevie before he had to head on home. It’s a few minutes before he realizes that his eyes had been shut tight, he opens them and sees white again. Not the color of the wall, but the color of his knuckles. He’s grasping onto the arms of the treadmill for dear life, Bucky makes a conscious decision to let go, but he can’t. He can hardly remember where he is or why he’s running, but he can hear Steve’s voice a little louder now. Steve’s closer and he’s only getting closer. One second Bucky is gripping the treadmill, fingers wrapped so tightly around the arm that he thinks they’re permanently stuck that way and the next he’s sitting on the glossy white floor with Steve. He’s either crying or the sweat is falling into his eyes again and at this rate, it could possibly be both. When he looks up the treadmill is still on, still moving at the pace that he was running. Natasha turns it down and then off and that’s when the spell breaks loose, he feels like he’s going insane. The anxiety is rising up in his throat and Steve is shushing him. It isn’t until Steve puts his arms around him that he realizes this is all real, he’s real, Steve’s real, everything that just happened on the treadmill was real, and his mom and that memory had been real once too. 

“Bucky, it’s okay. This is going to happen, you don’t have to feel bad about this.”

And Bucky believes him, not because he said it, but because of the fact that Steve sounded like he meant it when he said it. 

“It just feels like too much sometimes, I don’t even know who I am when I’m like that, Stevie.” Natasha walks out of the gym and Steve kisses him. It’s a tender kiss, one that makes Bucky feel weak in a totally different way. One that makes him feel like a person, one that makes him think of Steve as a person. Not just a person, but one with flaws and fears and insecurities. And it was all true, Steve wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but he didn’t have to be. Steve’s just a person and as long as they were both just people, they were allowed to love each other and they were allowed to fight for that love. 

“Does that feel real?” 

“I don’t know, I think you might have to do it again, just to make sure.” Bucky’s always up for a little bit of lovin’, even if he’s grinning through watery eyes and a runny nose.

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to continue it, because it's a real issue and sometimes I deal with it and I'm sure there are other people out there who deal with it too and considering Bucky's past and experiences, I'm sure that it's something that he struggles with too. I hope that this has the ability to be therapeutic.


End file.
